Our Views: Bad start to holiday

Our Views: Bad start to holiday

The Fourth of July falls on a Friday, so many Americans are taking advantage to have a week off and enjoy the summer. It is deeply frustrating that the holiday period started with another senseless shooting that sprayed bullets in the heart of the French Quarter.

“Everybody was looking at these people bleeding all over world-famous Bourbon Street,” one witness said, sharing the shock at the shooting that wounded nine.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu promised quick action to identify the shooter or shooters, but the story already is all too familiar, with young men settling an argument with weapons in a street crowded with revelers after 2 a.m.

The victims did not deserve this, and the thousands of people in New Orleans and Louisiana who benefit from the tourist trade don’t deserve the bad publicity that a heavily armed assailant provided over the weekend.